


My Wings, My Gravity

by emeraldine087



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Artist Steve Rogers, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Feels, M/M, Near Death Epiphanies, Near Death Experiences, Pining Tony Stark, Soulmarks, Stream of Consciousness, Temporary Character Death, The Author Regrets Nothing, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark POV, Tony Stark-centric, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 07:04:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6319435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeraldine087/pseuds/emeraldine087
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony's had these marks since he can remember. Jarvis tells him that everyone is born with it: a name on each of our arms, on the crook between the forearm and bicep, behind the elbow—the names of the person we’re meant to be with, the half of our soul; and the person in whose hands we’re fated to meet our death. Only no one knows which name is which until later on in life.</p><p>But Tony's marks are peculiar because on both his arms, the same name is written:</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Steve.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	My Wings, My Gravity

**Author's Note:**

> This story just stole my focus away from "In Need of Someone With the Right Temperament" so I just had to finish this first before I get back to kneading my brains for my WIP. This is inspired by several posts in Tumblr (mostly ones with/from/reblogged by Sineala) about having marks of your soulmate/enemy on your wrists. So this is my take on that. Not 616 but MCU.
> 
> The scenes are mostly IM-IM2-Avengers-IM3-CATWS-AOU compliant. There's a fanart on Tumblr/Pinterest also that inspired a scene I wrote here about Tony finding Cap's shield in the Potomac and giving it back to him in the hospital.
> 
> Hm, so now that I've finally gotten this off my chest, I am off to write my WIP and possibly another one-shot one featuring Stuckony, if I'm not too lazy...
> 
> This is unbeta-edited by a third party but I did self-edit (here's to hoping it's not too crappy). Let me know of any issues, typos, inconsistencies, please please (as always), and here we go! Enjoy y'all!  
> ___

It’s a Friday when I meet my death because of the person whose name is written by fate on the crook of my arm behind my elbow.

 _Steve_.

-0-0-0-

I've had these marks since I can remember. Jarvis (our butler who’s been with us since I was born), who raised me when my own parents can't be bothered to rear a child, even one as remarkable as I was, tells me that everyone is born with it: a name on each of our arms, on the crook between the forearm and bicep, behind our elbow—the names of the person we’re meant to be with, the half of our soul; and the person in whose hands we’re fated to meet our death. Only no one knows which name is which until later on in life.

I ask one question after another, in rapid-fire succession. Even as a child of tender years, I have misgivings about that explanation, probably thinking that it’s sheer absurdity. Even as a child, I'm a big believer that if there’s no scientific explanation for something, it’s not worth knowing and fussing over. At some point, I even think that my asshole of a father must have something to do with why I had such marks tainting my skin. Because he wants me reminded day in and day out that I’m not the master of my own body. He’s an asshole, my old man, so I think I wouldn't put it past him to have marked me as a baby and then cooked up that explanation of pure lunacy to rub it in my mug that 'You're fucking _owned_ , boy, and there's nothing you can do about it!'

I don't believe Jarvis not even after he shows me his own marks: _Jean_ on one arm and _Galahad_ on the other. Incidentally (and I'm saying this because, as I’ve said, I’m a staunch nonbeliever), Jarvis' wife _was_ fondly nicknamed Jean by her family despite having been given the name Ana Jessamyn on official record. Which should have been enough for me to make a complete turnaround on my pessimism, right? But I argue that the name Jean is horribly common. There are actually 4 people in my year alone in boarding school with that name and they’re all male! I don't even bother counting the 6 members of the wait staff and faculty in said boarding school who also has Jean in their names. Also, I argue like the smart-aleck that I am that since Jarvis’ Jean had died already, it’s equally plausible that Galahad is Jarvis' real soul mate, whom he hadn't met yet and Jean, the pompous French turd from my year that Jarvis always enjoys baiting with well-timed sarcasm is going to be his killer. And I laugh my ass off at that to Jarvis’ chagrin.

Suffice it to say that I stay a nonbeliever.

Until Jarvis dies on the operating table when I’m 19, barely 2 years after my parents were killed in a car accident, due to complications brought about by a bypass surgery to fix his ticker. At the hands of the cardiologist-surgeon, Dr. Galahad Tipton.

I nearly had a coronary myself when I see Jarvis’ hospital documents. Galahad is _not_ a common name. It becomes considerably harder for me to logic or science my way out of _that_ one!

In hindsight, I’m probably in heavy denial about the reason behind the marks on my skin because if that’s the real explanation for those marks then I’m so royally fucked:

Because both my arms, right there in the crook between the bicep and the forearm, painfully visible and difficult to ignore, have the _same name_ on them.

 _Steve_.

-0-0-0-

There are definite advantages to having the same name written on both arms, I have to admit: for one thing, I don’t have to guess that I would die by the hands of someone named _Steve_. And as life and living have always been ranked higher than one true love in Tony Stark’s priorities list, I’m always more on the lookout for _Steve_ -my potential killer than _Steve_ -my soul mate.

For another thing, knowledge is really power. Having the knowledge that _Steve_ and only _Steve_ is meant to kill me is like Tony Stark’s personal brand of manifest destiny. I’m pretty sure that none of these multi-national terrorists who had ambushed our convoy and abducted me are named _Steve_ and so none of them are really meant to kill me, I _know_ I’m not meant to die in this cave and this gives me the willpower to defy them. I’m a Stark; I’m not anyone’s pawn. I’m not going to make missiles only because a bunch of a-holes threatens me!

Not that I’m not scared out of my fucking wits, though, because I am. And if anyone of them turns out to actually be named _Steve_ or going by that alias out of sheer fondness for the name, I would shit a fucking brick.

Wracking my brains, I actually don’t know _anyone_ named _Steve_. Not anyone in Stark Industries I usually interact with, not in my geek circles, charity benefits crowd, or even in the friend of a friend of an employee-six degrees of separation circle. The only _Steve_ I know is my old idol from my formative years: Captain America aka Capt. Steve Rogers, but he’s long dead if my father’s slurred long-suffering rants of immense regret over tumblers of whiskey directed at 6-year-old me were anything to go by. So, no—no _Steve_ satellite anywhere near my current orbit.

And that knowledge, as I have said, is power. Power that I am not ashamed of harnessing in this dank and dark cave to spur me into action. I am 100% convinced that the reason I’m even able to come up with the flight- and combat-ready exoskeleton Mark I and escape from this hell-hole is because I’m absolutely confident that I’m not meant to die here.

I give it a good try, though—dying. Shrapnel in my body. About to enter my heart. Surgery in a cave. Electro-magnet where my sternum used to be. Hooked to a car battery for goodness knows how long.

A+ for fucking effort!

But unlike Jarvis, I don’t die on the makeshift operating table in the cave. I don’t have the name _Yinsen_ on either of my arms, after all, so the man succeeds in saving me. And I should’ve returned the favor but I don’t...

I will always, _always_ wonder if on one of Yinsen’s arms, there’s the name _Tony_. Because I as good as kill him myself when I let him run out, guns blazing to buy me time. And if there is, would he still have saved me with the knowledge that I’m going to be the death of him?

But I will never know. It’s a riddle I will have to die not knowing the solution to. There’s no use thinking about that now when I’m supposed to be dead…

-0-0-0-

_Obadiah. Obie._

_Ivan._ Vanko _._

Shit—let’s include Hammer in this party! _Justin_.

They also try their damnedest to step in for _Steve_ , take one for fate’s team and off me. But they’re not meant to, so I push on. I defeat them because I know I can. Duh—they aren’t named _Steve_!

Another perk to this fated-to-die-by- _Steve_ ’s-hand is a certain feeling of invincibility: if you don’t have the name spelled out on my arms, then by god, Tony Stark can rise—and will—rise above and defeat you. I’m a self-proclaimed nuclear deterrent. I’m a one-man insurance policy for the United States and all the citizens under her care. I’m Iron Man. I’m a fucking superhero!

And then palladium poisoning sets in. Like a really bad acid trip… Maybe I just don’t know it, but somewhere—in some obscure universe out there—palladium poisoning is a codename for _Steve_ or something! Like a secret call sign or code—

I’m reminded of all of the things I asked Jarvis about these marks, and why it never occurred to me to ask what name would be on the arm of someone who died, say, of old age? Or cancer? Is there a possibility of not having one or both marks? So many questions left unanswered. But come to think of it, Jarvis wasn’t really much help also because his answers were based on faith or what little information his own parents had told him about why we had marks in the first place or based on conjecture and angelic conspiracy theories or some such horseshit.

There are books, of course. There are always books about anything and everything. But as I’m still fighting the idea of not being in control of one’s fate, I flat-out refuse to fill my time and my brain with such useless information when precious memory pockets are better served, say, by remembering the mobile number of some Victoria’s Secret angel or thinking about schematics for a suit upgrade.

In the end, it doesn’t matter because science triumphs! It’s not easy synthesizing vibranium, but I always like a challenge. Tony Stark won’t go quietly in the night, that’s for sure. And _Steve_ will have his work cut out for him, trying to kill me. I live to fight the good fight; I live to die another day. Then I start thinking, maybe—just maybe—like the riddle of my mechanical heart, I can overcome this _Steve Problem_ , too. It won’t hurt if I read up on it, try to understand it. And with understanding might come a solution, a loophole, an out.

So OK, there’s a shitload of information about it: Destiny Marks, the folklorists call them. The published researches are split as to their cultural significance. Still some call them nothing but glorified coincidences. No matter what they are or where they are thought to come from, there is one piece of information that all these materials seem to have in common, and that is: there had _never_ been a case like mine since World War II (when Destiny Marks were first recorded to have appeared in a considerable percentage of the existing population), where the same name taints the skin on both arms.

Oh, to be me!

-0-0-0-

When I meet Captain America for the first time in a quinjet en route to the super-secret SHIELD base from Stuttgart bearing a god of mischief hell bent on making Earth his bitch, I freak out inside. Why, you might ask? Well, because, for starters, he’s supposed to be _dead_ , but like an immortal, avenging angel, he’s come out of cryogenic stasis underneath several tons of arctic ice, crossed the seas of time to find himself here—in the 21st century, looking immaculate, and—and… patriotic, and… like he’d had the best beauty sleep this side of cutting-edge dermatological science. How many times do I fight the urge to mess up that perfectly coifed blonde hair just to see if he bites, I stop counting at some point.

Two: this is the man that my father lionized, the man my father nearly drunk himself to the grave for, if some punk who had no business being behind the wheel of a car hadn’t gotten there first. This is the man _I_ idolized and, for the longest time, wanted to be, if only to get a morsel of my father’s attention. At least until I stopped caring about the _how_ when it came to getting Howard’s attention and turned my eye to more self-indulgent deeds—sex, booze, drugs, pointless extravagance, self-destruction… which as it turned out got Howard’s attention just fine.

Steve Rogers, this person—right here, is apparently the Stark men’s hemlock: he destroyed my father, and now he’s come back from the dead, right out of cryogenic stasis from way back in ’45, to destroy me—my soul’s half _and_ my slayer—for of course, they _had_ to be one and the same person—they _had_ to be…because this is _me_ , and my destiny is a fucking shitstorm like that!

How dramatic—that this here _Steve_ survives being frozen to miraculously wake up in the 21st century because he is _destined_ to meet me, _complete_ me and _kill_ me!

Craptastic.

I think I should get myself as far away from this man as possible. But why can’t I stop baiting him? It’s fucking fun to bait someone who obviously has a ten-foot pole up his ass. I must have a death wish. I get in his face and he gets in mine, practically telling me that I’m nothing without my suit…

_“Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?”_

…and that I’m not a superhero…

_“I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you… You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero.”_

The asshole.

Any doubts I might have had at the start, any form of wishful thinking that this _Steve_ is not my demise, are all kaput. He’s fucking out to get me. I try my hardest to hide how much he has affected me with those scathing words. What the fuck does he know anyway? He thinks he knows me by looking at fucking _surveillance footages_?! What?! He doesn’t know what I’ve been through, the guilt I’ve had to live with, the yearning for redemption that remains to be elusive to me.  

Thankfully, I have a repertoire of snark and Stark-branded sass and sarcasm to hide behind.

I can’t let Rogers’ opinion of me or Coulson’s death affect me—I’m supposed to be bad-ass. There’s an equation that needs solving, a super-soldier from the ice age that needs to be proven wrong; and since I am Tony Stark and I _still_ like a challenge, I immerse myself, elbows deep, in it. I pull myself together for the final confrontation with Loki. In my baby, no less: the newly-completed Stark Tower. I gotta hand it to the guy—sending the biggest Fuck You to my face like this. Shit just got personal, so I designate myself as the advance party, offer the god of mischief a drink armed with nothing else but my ego and my Black Sabbath shirt, break-in a never-before-tested prototype to battle an intergalactic army of aliens spewing out of this hole in space _in fucking droves_! No skin off my teeth…

And to show that I bear him no ill will, I ask the Captain to call the strategy to contain the fight, and you know—maybe get lucky and defeat these sonsabitches.

Grudgingly admitting that we make one hell of a team, I keep tabs on my newly-dubbed Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in my HUD, watching them fight their best fight. And for the whole of five minutes, I think we actually have a chance to live through this and win. There’s something to fighting _with_ someone. I can’t quite put a finger on it yet, but there’s this…awareness that you’re no longer just keeping tabs on your own well-being, but the collective well-being of everyone else crazy enough to meet the conflict head-on like you.

When it suddenly occurs to me, as I slam against a waiting shed display after having come out of the rear end of an alien leviathan, that I can very well die today. I’ve just handed Captain Steve Rogers the reins to directing this whole she-bang, in effect putting the team—and my life—in his hands.

_“Stark, you hearing me? We have a missile headed straight for the city.”_

I must say that the first thought that pops into my head, hearing that there’s a nuke coming to wipe out the island with me still in it was ‘now’s my chance to prove Rogers wrong. I can, too, make the sacrifice play and lay down on a wire to let the other guy crawl over me!’ But then I realize that that would be playing straight into fate’s hands: death by Steve’s egging. Jesus—won’t look too good on marble, will it?

And then I think of Pepper. Of Happy. Of Rhodey. Of—wow, are those, seriously, the _only_ people I care about, and who—presumably—care about me, too? Such a pathetically short list! But it doesn’t matter how short or long the list is, does it? I have to do right by these people. If it means I have to die so the lot of them can live, then wouldn’t that be the best way to go?

This isn’t about fate. Or _Steve_. Or even proving Rogers wrong. This is the _loophole_. The loophole is choice.

_“How long? … JARVIS, put everything we got into the thrusters!”_

Even after Romanoff says she can close the portal and Rogers gives his go, I stop them—resolute that I need that portal open for just a bit longer.

_“Stark, you know that’s a one way trip?”_

Who gives a shit?

What lies beyond that big chasm in the sky is a beautiful horror. Powdery light as far as the eye can see, a dark alien mothership awaiting to conquer my home. My arc reactor-powered heart thrums like a cat’s—fast, unrelenting and loud. I let go of the missile that I carried through the hole on my back and watch as it finds its mark, erupting into a big cloud of light. I choke. I choke on nothing. I choke on tears that refuse to fall. This is it, Tony, I tell myself. Today, you die.

But not quite. As I jolt awake to the sound of Big Green roaring on my right ear.

Worried blue eyes on those fine-boned features. Was Rogers actually worried about me? But it’s gone so quickly that I must have just imagined it. I blame extra-early onset of PTSD.

_“We won.”_

It’s only much later that I find out from Barton that it was Rogers who gave Romanoff the command to close the portal.

With me still inside it.

-0-0-0-

I don’t have any opinion on the subject of whether the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages to having the marks, until I realize I’m somewhat, possibly, just a teeny, tiny bit in love with my assistant-turned-CEO, the one and the only Pepper Potts.

She’s one charming woman, and we do give a romantic relationship a try for all of eleven months. But eventually we stop kidding ourselves; there’s always going to be the proverbial sword of Damocles hanging over our relationship because her name isn’t _Steve_. Hell, she doesn’t even share the same _gender_ as _Steve_! None of the names on her arms also reads _Tony_ , so maybe the relationship is doomed from the get-go.

And to think, here I am fully convinced that choice is a loophole to the whole Destiny Marks business. Apparently not, if my failed attempt at a relationship with Pepper is anything to go by.

I fucking hate it… It’s like we’re not free to love whom we want because even that choice was taken from us when some Divine Engineer, whose sense of humor rivals that of a sarcastic lawyer with ADHD on crack, decided to play matchmaker-slash-undertaker. Who says you can’t love anyone else whose name is different from the one staining your skin?! And what if you never meet that person you’re supposedly destined to be with—will you settle for spending a lifetime _by yourself_?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not clamoring to find the ‘destiny of my heart’ because I am perfectly fine with just having to fuck my way through the Playboy catalog. I’ve never been in want of a body to warm my bed and a mouth to suck my cock. I certainly don’t need forever, eternity and destiny. But come on! Something about the notion of spending a lifetime alone because your destiny failed to come find you must piss you off, too!

I should have fought it out with Pepper. I should have told her that the name _Steve_ can be fucking carved on my fucking dick for all I care, but I want to keep trying with her, until it stops mattering to us what her name is or what _my_ name is. We’re better than these marks on our skin. Haven’t we just proven our love for each other, surviving the Aldrich Killian-AIM-Extremis-Mandarin conflict?

But no amount of convincing is enough to make Pepper reconsider. She says that there’s someone out there who is meant to complete us, who knows what we need before we know it ourselves, who is our opposite to make for a more action-packed relationship and, at the same time, our complement to better handle our brand of crazy, who challenges us, makes us question our beliefs but also supports us when the whole world turns its back on us, who makes us want to kill them but heal them, who has in their hands both the power to destroy us and put us back together.

She assures me that we will always be friends. And that has to be enough for me. But it’s not, because I loved her. I _love_ her. Yet, despite that love we couldn’t make it work. She stays with me through the operation to remove the shrapnel in my body though, saying she owes me this, at least. And every day that we’re together, I try to convince her to no avail. At some point, I even show her my marks and explain why I’m so hell-bent, wanting to make things work with her. Hell—I have more chance of working it out with her than making it work with my killer destiny!

But I guess, this time—it’s not just about me. Pepper, too, must be hoping to find the one destined for her. Behind her PowerPoint presentations sent from hell, mountains of paperwork to make a grown man weep and that clipboard of doom, she’s an optimist like that. And who am I to deny her? I mean, just because fate is screwing me over with my marks doesn’t mean it’s horrible for everyone else.

I owe Pepper a shitload that three lifetimes’ supply of Jimmy Choos will never be able to repay. But another thing I owe Pepper for is that she made me think about the name on my _other_ arm when I used to think only of the name who is going to be the death of me. Against my best intentions, I start to think about it, and one thing becomes crystal clear: I _will_ spend my life alone, incomplete—soul mate-less. Since I am convinced that the person meant to complete me and destroy me are one and the same, I would have to be right fucking insane with a death wish to want to find them.

The faster I can wrap my genius head around that little sweetheart, the better the rest of my life (the one I’m destined to live alone) will be. ‘Cause it sure as hell can’t get any worse, can it?

There’s one other thing Pepper made me realize:

My near-death epiphany is a lie. Choice is a fucking illusion.

-0-0-0-

Since Killian aka the Mandarin bombed my Malibu house, I decide to up and relocate myself, my bots, the handful of things I actually give a shit about to New York. I move in just as the construction guys finish hinging my door to the door jamb and get to work immediately. As a way, also, of trying to occupy my time so I don’t have to think about Pepper. At least, she’s kind enough to stay on as my company’s CEO—I mean, it was bad enough that I couldn’t keep her as my girlfriend, it would’ve been a total nightmare if she resigned as my CEO, too. I can replace a girlfriend; a CEO is tougher to look for.

I invite Big Green aka Dr. Bruce Banner to stay in the newly-rebuilt Avengers Tower with me during one of my impromptu visits to the SHIELD lab he decided to hole up in after the attack in New York. I start out by casually discussing my recent tie-in with AIM, regaling him with the highly exciting adventures of Iron Man that trace back from 1999 Bern to the present, and he does me the immense courtesy of actively napping on me. So, I just drop the bomb, inviting him to come live with me and saying that I won’t take no for an answer. Let me tell you that if I’m going for shock and awe, mission accomplished.  

Bruce moves in one Monday afternoon, carrying a measly duffel that apparently contains all of his possessions. Guy believes in traveling light, that’s for sure. And since he’d been on the run for such a long period of time, I guess he’s learned to value convenience more than comfort. Who needs another underwear really? I mean, I’ve only ever seen Brucie-bear in the same brown extra-baggies. I think I’ll make him some stretchy pants for when Big Green makes an appearance. I’m thinking purple…stretchy pants. Yeah…

For a couple of weeks, I establish a routine: sleep every three days (do away with all the nasty night terrors that 40-ish bad-ass superheroes are not supposed to get); eat every other day; make weekly upgrades of Romanoff’s Widow’s Bite and Barton’s bow and related implements—not that they’re ever going to see/use it, but it makes for something to occupy my time and my mind; look in on Bruce and his experiment/research for the week and maybe chat for a couple of hours, watch a truckload of cartoons, attend an SI meeting now and again, call Rhodey to appease him that no one’s killed me yet.

And it’s a charmed life, too. Until JARVIS reports that the mother-lode of intelligence info is dumped in the internet courtesy of Romanoff and that I’m being targeted by one of the Project Insight helicarriers, the engines of which I upgraded, out of the goodness of my heart, after having seen Fury’s pathetic excuse for a big-ass hovercraft engine (and getting me blasted to kingdom come is how the one-eyed jackass plans to repay me?! So much for altruism…).

But then the threat passes, and JARVIS reports that the helicarriers have started shooting themselves out of the sky over the Potomac. All that excitement, and to think I haven’t even had my third cup of coffee yet!

On my fifth cup of coffee, I decide to find out what had happened. Apparently, HYDRA happened. SHIELD, the organization founded by Howard and Aunt Peggy, is no longer what we thought it was. It has been infiltrated by HYDRA.

Goddammit!

Where is Rogers in all this?

Not that I’m concerned about the guy because, really, I can’t care less. But he’s still my teammate in the super-secret boy band that Fury had strong-armed me into joining. I am _curious_ ; so sue me. Care and curiosity are two very different things.

I try to get in touch with people, making calls to SI, to Romanoff, to Hill—none of which comes through. What the fuck is happening? I hate not knowing stuff; I hate not being in the loop. So, what do I do? I flex my fingers and do some hacking to get information that no one is currently at liberty to share with me. And I pretty much get the whole picture from that. Man, I’m good!

The shitstorm that follows is even worse. Senate inquiries, body counts, threats of jail time, compromised intelligence apparatus (not that there’s anything intelligent about the asshats in the Senate throwing tantrums over it!), ruins of gigantic hovercrafts littering the Potomac, decrease in popularity ratings of the Avengers causing a drop in Avengers-inspired toys’ sales (I mean, I can’t tell you enough how much of an ego boost it is to see interactive action figures of Iron Man in the kiddies’ hands), and Captain Fucking America unconscious in the goddamned hospital…

Don’t get me wrong; I still don’t care. But I did idolize the bastard at one point in my life when my brain cells weren’t much developed yet, and as a result, I am a bit surprised to hear that he got banged up that much that warranted a stint in the hospital which the guy probably never had to do since the 40s.

Oh and the iconic Cap shield is missing. Apparently, the remains of the helicarriers in the Potomac are making it difficult to find the shield. For a day and a half, the people with clearance to do the search and retrieval run around in a panic, bumping against each other like mindless cretins and no shield. I hate incompetent people like that, especially incompetent people who aren’t even smart enough to ask for help when they clearly need it. So as the magnanimously rich philanthropist that I am, I get myself involved and it doesn’t even take me an hour before I’m in a prototype suit (which I have been dying to test run) underwater, retrieving the famed shield myself, to the utter amazement of the bureaucratic sycophants.

Suck it, fuckwads!

_“You found it.”_

When I slip into the Captain’s hospital room to find Sam Wilson in vigil beside the bed of the legendary and very much unconscious super soldier bearing the shield, he actually sounds amazed. That I actually did what was impossible for the bureaucratic sycophants or that it was _me_ who found the shield, I’ll never know. Maybe both. ‘Cause hey!—it’s me, and god knows I don’t get up for anything unless you’re a big barrel of coffee, you’re a blond with a big rack, or you come bearing a non-working but promising science project.

_“What’s Captain America without his shield?”_

I don’t want to be a yutz, preening at the unspoken admiration, so I decide to go for coolly dismissive and nail it…

_“Come to New York one of these days, and I just might throw in a free upgrade to those wings of yours, birdboy.”_

_“Aren’t you going to stay and wait for him to wake up?”_

_“Nah. I already did what I came here to do.”_

I still don’t care. I’m sticking to that press release. Or maybe somewhere down that road I start to. But I’m just too self-involved to see it.

I don’t even look at _him_ , prostrate on the bed, as I leave.

-0-0-0-

It’s a Wednesday when Rogers first visits the newly-remodeled Avengers Tower. At first, he stays less than an hour, just to welcome Thor back who had come back from Asgard on a mission: find Loki’s Scepter of Mind Fuckery, which was last seen in the custody of SHIELD. SHIELD, of course, had become mostly defunct after having been overrun by HYDRA. So we, that is Bruce and myself (since we’re so smart like that), deduce that most probably the sought-after stick is in the hands of HYDRA. Because, duh!—something as powerful as that must have caught their eye. It sure caught mine (especially when the bastard started poking my chest with it!).

Then, when strategizing and subsequent raiding of possible HYDRA bases become more frequent and intense, the Captain starts to spend more and more time in the Tower. Not only the Captain, but Romanoff and Barton, as well. At some point, I suddenly come out of some sort of haze I’ve been walking around in for a couple days now to see a dinner table-cum-war room with very much-involved people planning a series of incursions over deep-dish pizzas, bacon cheeseburgers, Pop tarts and mugs of soda (or coffee in my case, vodka for Romanoff and chamomile tea for Bruce), and I’m gobsmacked. When did these people move into my Tower?! And where was I when they did?!

Like the eccentric recluse that I am, it’s that realization that makes me retreat into the comfort of my workshop and my non-judgey bots for longer and longer periods of time. I still do come to the common area when we strategize but apart from those times, I keep to myself, well, because it’s safer that way. For everyone.

Most everyone gets it, too, and they give me a wide berth… Save for one: Rogers.

It’s a Saturday when the Captain first presents himself to the door of my workshop, respectfully requesting entrance. JARVIS points this out to me as I’m in the middle of delicate soldering work for a third upgrade of my suit. I look up to find Rogers shuffling his feet, bearing a plate piled high with burgers and fries and a tumbler of some drink.

I think of turning him away, but I reconsider when JARVIS additionally advises that there’s freshly-brewed, piping hot coffee in the tumbler in the Captain’s hands. Ugh… the sacrifices I do for coffee…

He comes in and offers me the food and drink with a tight-lipped smile.

 _“Just place it anywhere and you can leave.”_ I know, I know… I’m such an ingrate and to think he’s already brought me coffee—

He obliges, but turns around just as he’s about to leave, hanging back like there’s something else he wants to say.

_“I’ve actually never been here before. It’s nice. Did you build all these machines yourself?”_

I can’t believe he’s hanging around to make small talk! God, what did I do today to deserve this?! I merely hum my distracted reply, thinking that the Captain would go if he fails to engage me in coherent conversation.

_“Well… they’re amazing, Stark. I’d like to draw them.”_

_“Oh yeah, that’s right. You were an artist before the war.”_ I swear to God that just slipped! It’s times like these that I absolutely detest not having a functioning brain-to-mouth filter. The do-not-engage-and-maybe-he-will-leave plan = tit’s up.

The Captain actually looks taken aback that _I_ would know something like that. Hell— _I_ am taken aback that I would know something like that!

_“I didn’t think you’d know that…”_

I don’t reply. That’s right. Self-control. Sometimes, I have it, too.

_“So, may I?”_

_“Huh? What?”_

_“May I draw them?”_

That’s how it starts. Whenever there aren’t any incursions planned, Rogers goes to the workshop to bring me food, mostly in the morning—pizza slices, cake slices, soft shell tacos, nachos, burritos, waffles and blessed, blessed coffee—to get into my good graces. Since I hardly eat anything by myself when I’m crazy busy with projects (which I always am…) and never eat anything with the rest of them, I always fall for the Trojan horse. And once I open the door to my workshop to let the coffee in, he sneaks himself in also, places the sustenance within reaching distance, parks himself on the lone, beat-up couch with his pencil and a few leaves of paper, and draws.

It’s after several episodes of this that I start to notice that Rogers has developed a routine at my expense. So one day, after he leaves, I throw out the workshop’s ratty couch where Rogers usually parks himself and maliciously anticipates his visit the next day, inwardly smiling like a Cheshire cat.

The routine starts out as it usually does: Rogers respectfully requests entrance, bearing a paper bag stuffed with extra-greasy burgers (judging by the smell) and a coffee the size of a small bucket; he enters with his bashful half-smile and a soft ‘morning,’ places his burden on the only clear tabletop within my reach and proceeds towards the couch.

Only the couch isn’t there. I want to titter in amusement, but I restrain myself.

As it turns out, the joke’s on me because the patriotic dork folds his long muscular legs in a lotus position on a clear spot on the floor, makes himself as comfortable as he can and starts drawing like he did yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that.

This guy just doesn’t know how to take a fucking hint, does he?! So I content myself with fuming wordlessly, but not calling him out on it. One of these days, he’ll get tired of this; he’ll take the hint and finally leave me alone.

Only he doesn’t. For the next couple of _months_ , the good Captain—without fail (unless we have planned HYDRA incursions) keeps to his routine of bringing me food and coffee, parking himself anywhere on the workshop and drawing. We don’t talk. Save for that epic first day and the occasional ‘what are you working on?’ which I answer with as few syllables as I can, we don’t talk. He just draws and draws. Which is weird because, after a couple of months, he must have already drawn everything there is to draw in the workshop—I mean—if you’ve drawn one electrical cable, you’ve drawn them all, right? But he keeps at it, which makes me think that I might be kinda losing my touch when it comes to pissing people off. Like maybe I’m going about this all wrong by giving him the silent treatment. But what am I supposed to talk about with him?

Things sort of come to a head when Brucie-bear drops by while the Captain’s also in the workshop, doing the usual artsy-fartsy shit and minding his own business (only he’s minding his own business in my personal space—it’s a peeve, I know!) Bruce keeps eyeing him and asking me through his eyeballs and a combination of Morse code, Vulcan and Lord of the Rings elven language what the Captain’s hanging out in my workshop for. But I just roll my eyes at him because I, myself, don’t know the answer. After Bruce leaves, Rogers stands up from the floor, dusts himself off and makes for the door.

_“You and Dr. Banner seem to know each other so well.”_

Huh? What are we talking about? Why the devil is he still here?!

_“And it’s just occurred to me that I don’t know you at all apart from—you know—your long-standing love affair with coffee. And your preference for all things swimming in grease…”_

Don’t smile, Tony; don’t smile… Shit.

_“Well, I’m off, Stark. Thanks for the company.”_

_“See you tomorrow.”_ Yeah, Stark, you had to open your trap, don’t you? I cringe just as the words are out of my mouth, hoping against hope that Cap is already too far away from me to hear.

No such luck. _“See you tomorrow, Stark.”_

-0-0-0-

Against my best interests, things actually begin to change after that. With the Captain and the rest of the team. We don’t become friends, like me and Brucie-bear or me and Mama Bear (read, Rhodey) are friends, but things become a bit less tense among the members of this so-called team.

Cap and I occasionally talk now, too, during his hang-out sessions in my workshop. One time, we talk about Howard but, detecting my aversion to the topic, he quickly steers the conversation away to a less fucked-up subject matter. He likes asking about 21st century things, though—popular culture, modern literature, the latest movies and innovations in technology. And to a certain extent, I like answering because I like hearing my voice (what? So sue me…) and the brilliant way I explain things.

I’m still wary of him because those Destiny Marks ain’t changing or going away… He’s still going to be the death of me, and that kind of knowledge tends to really put a damper on friendships. Plus, he’s still kinda a wet blanket, old-fashioned 98-year-old geezer in a 28-year-old’s body, which is—like—fucking unfair. I mean, what I would do if I had that body… And it’s not a lousy body, too, loathe as I am to admit it.

No, but apart from these off-the-cuff observations and the civil treatment of each other which is somewhere in the vicinity of more familiar acquaintances and casual friends, I’m still a bit cagey around him. He is of me, too. _Why_ that is, I haven’t the foggiest. I mean, it’s not like my name is splayed on his arm as well, right?

For the record, I haven’t seen them—Cap’s Destiny Marks (I don’t even know if he has them. I mean, he comes from a time before any Destiny Marks were documented, right?). And I’m not interested to, in case it turns into one of them episodes of you’ve-seen-mine-I’m-entitled-to-see-yours-as-well. No one but Pepper has seen mine, and that’s bad enough considering the many, many times she likes to play Eyeball Tennis whenever she’s in the same room as Cap and myself—No, I have absolutely no intentions of showing my marks to _anyone_ else.

I’m perfectly fine also with keeping our civil association the way it is; at least, I don’t have to keep any appointments to hang out, shoot the breeze, grab a couple of cold ones and some such shit with anyone. I’m too busy—in between building my Iron Legion and trying to configure more advanced artificial intelligence than JARVIS, I really don’t have the time and the temperament.

But have you ever noticed that just when you get used to a certain routine—a _status quo_ , so to speak, that’s exactly when the universe likes to fuck things up?

-0-0-0-

_“You could’ve saved us. Why didn’t you do more?”_

The horror is real. Apparently, no matter how much you keep your so-called teammates at arm’s length, you’ll still end up caring more than you’re prepared to admit.

I try to keep a jovial air on the flight back from Sokovia, after another secret HYDRA base incursion. But in reality, I am immensely discomfited by what I had seen—Cap, Brucie-bear, Widow, Legolas and Point Break, all dead. That big, blue planet surrounded by freakish aliens. So much death and destruction, and I was sitting on top of it.

I don’t know what that was or where it came from—it could’ve been a form of manipulation by the Enhanced; it could’ve been a hallucination because I was too tired…Frankly, I don’t care about its origins. There’s only _one thing_ about that vision that bugs me:

If all of them were dead, why wasn’t I? Why was I alive?

And it’s like Yinsen all over again. Call it what you want—survivor’s guilt, survivor’s remorse, plain and simple PTSD—it really doesn’t matter. Because the result remains the same. It’s always someone else who pays for my failures. Those soldiers in the convoy, the innocents attacked by the terrorists using my company’s weapons, Yinsen, the casualties in Flushing, in New York, Happy and Pepper…

They say no one can save everybody. I get that. But maybe no one should need saving in the first place if I hadn’t made the decisions that put everyone else in harm’s way. If I fuck up, why does someone else end up paying for it? Why couldn’t it just be me?

And it chews me up inside, so much so that I ask Thor if Bruce and I can give the scepter the once-over before it goes back to Asgard. Maybe it can give me the answers I’m looking for.

Bruce knows about it—how much New York really did a number on me, so I try to talk to him about what I had discovered about the scepter: the possibility of artificial intelligence. We labor and we do what we do best for the next 72 hours; we science. But nothing works. _Nothing works!_ Why doesn’t it work? I really thought the scepter was going to make a difference, but it doesn’t.

So what does Tony Stark do when nothing seems to go his way? He parties. Hard. It’s actually the first party we’ve ever had as a team. And it does what it’s meant to do—distract me—at least for a couple of hours. Rhodey is there; so is Wilson (who is stuck to Cap’s hip), Dr. Cho (who has moony eyes for Thor), Hill (who, at one time, asks about my and Thor’s lady-loves—which I evade quite masterfully, if truth be told), and the rest of the team, including a good-as-new Barton.

We even end up playing a game: Hammer Time, I think I’m going to call it. The objective: lift the extraterrestrial king’s magic carpentry tool and rule Asgard. And surprise, surprise (or actually, no—I’m not surprised)… I can’t lift it… No one can. And Thor says it’s because none of us are worthy. Which if “worthiness” is the bloody job description, then I think Cap, at least, should’ve been able to lift it—even just a hair. But no! Apparently, we’re all undeserving sonsabitches.

_“Worthy... No... How could you be worthy? You're all killers.”_

Of course. Universe: fucking hilarious sense of humor, Tony Stark: fucked. Rinse and repeat.

Everyone thinks this is my fault… OK, maybe, to a certain extent it is. But it doesn’t make sense because Bruce and I weren’t close to an interface. For three days, we came up with failed simulations after failed simulations and now, the one that actually turns out to be successful had to be murderously loopy, hell-bent on wiping us out.

_“Well, you did something right. And you did it right here. The Avengers were supposed to be different than SHIELD.”_

The Captain looks at me all accusatory and shit. Like he’s forgotten New York. So I remind them all.

_“A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We're standing three hundred feet below it. We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the live long day, but, that up there? That's...that's the end game. How were you guys planning on beating that?”_

_“Together.”_

I remind myself that I hate, hate, _hate_ this guy. I hate his High School Musical bullshit, his bullheadedness, his optimism. I hate that he can ruin the walls that took me so long to put up around myself with a just one word: together.

I’ve never had to rely on a lot of people my whole life. I mean, yeah sure—there was Jarvis, whom my parents paid to take care of me, and later on, there’s Pepper and Happy, who both worked for me, also getting paid to cater to me and deal with me. There’s Rhodey, whom I’ve known since my days in MIT when we used to partner up for school work. But I’ve never really thought of them as my friends—my people—until much later because I used to think that they were only around either for the money they were getting paid or the convenience of knowing a jumped-up nerd like me.

So to hear from this…this… _glorified fossil_ …that, in essence, we’ve got each other’s backs is throwing me off for a bit… OK—throwing me off _a lot_. Knowing what I know about him, who is destined to end me, and everything.

_“We’ll lose.”_

_“Then we’ll do that together, too.”_

A huge lump forms in my throat, looking into those blue eyes filled with sincerity and optimism. I tell myself: it’s a trick, Tony. Don’t fall for it. This guy is not your friend. You just fight bad guys together—you have a common objective, that’s all… In this super-secret boyband, you’re his one connection to the past, but that doesn’t make you chums.

It’s confirmed that my assessment is correct in that the ‘together’ speech is nothing but lip service when we hash it out in the Barton family farm/safe house after taking a massive hit dealt by Ultron and his minions, the Maximoff twins, over _chopping firewood_ —of all things…

_“You know Ultron is trying to tear us apart, right?”_

_“Well I guess you'd know. Whether you tell us is a bit of a question.”_

_“Banner and I were doing research—“_

_“—that would affect the team—“_

_“That would_ end _the team. Isn't that the mission? Isn't that the ‘why we fight,’ so we can end the fight, so we get to go home?!”_

The Captain rips a log with his bare hands. And that’s when I see it—just a fleeting glimpse of it. On his right arm, in the crook between his upper and forearm, behind the elbow. A name.

 _My_ name.

_“Every time someone tries to win a war before it starts, innocent people die... Every time.”_

Shit! Holy.

Fucking.

Shit.

-0-0-0-

I’m good at rationalizing things—trying to explain things that otherwise lack a logical explanation. But I’m coming up blank this time that I’m even tempted to ask Bruce about it. But I don’t want to show him my marks and he’s probably going to want to see to be able to help me make sense of this whole goddamn business.

According to my half-hearted research before, the only time that Destiny Marks ‘match’ is when the people are each other’s _soulmates_. ‘Cause it doesn’t make sense when the marks match because they’re destined to _kill_ each other. Unless it’s in a western fast draw duel or something. What are the odds that in a duel to the death, both participants succeed in offing each other? So who wins then?

Oh, but if that previous explanation is senseless, it’s even more senseless (like, 100 million times more) for the ‘soulmates’ explanation! Me and Cap—soulmates?! Whoa… Not possible… It’s just not.

Soulmates are supposed to complement each other; they’re supposed to finish each other’s sentences, think alike, feel what the other person is feeling and some such drivel. But me and Cap?! We’re almost always at odds with each other. He thinks I’m arrogant; and I think he’s self-righteous and condescending—99 times out of 100. There’s _no way_ in God’s green earth that we are soulmates.

Plus, he’s still gonna kill me, so no can do! I’m not a masochist. Contrary to popular opinion, I actually like— _love_ —my life, thank you very much.

I can’t be thinking about this! I can’t, because we still have Ultron to contend with. It’s also good that I am good—great…nay, _awesome_ —at compartmentalization. So that’s exactly what I do. I shove that issue deep, deep down and deal.

We devise a plan with Fury’s needling; we get off our asses and leave the safe house; we welcome an android and turncoat twins among our ranks and troop to Sokovia where the final confrontation is going to be waged. That’s also where the robot’s taken Natasha. Cap does his thing, you know, talk about strategy:

_“Ultron knows we're coming. Odds are we'll be riding into heavy fire. And that's what we signed up for. But the people of Sokovia, they didn't. So our priority is getting them out. All they want is to live their lives in peace. And that's not going to happen today. But we can do our best to protect them. And we can get the job done. We find out what Ultron's been building. We find Romanoff, and we clear the field. Keep the fight between us. Ultron thinks we're monsters and we're what's wrong with the world. This isn't just about beating him. It's about whether he's right.”_

Damn the man and his pre-battle speeches! I straighten up to say something cheeky or inane just to lighten things up, but he looks at me with those self-same sincerity and optimism and whatever crack I was going say dies in my throat.

The fight is one big blur for me; it always is. When your concerns are limited to staying alive and saving innocents, it’s easy to tune background noise out. Even more so today, when at the very back of my mind I think about that name on Cap’s arm and what it might mean.

_“Cap, you got incoming…”_

_“Incoming already came in… Stark, you worry about bringing the city back down safely. The rest of us have one job: tear these things apart. You get hurt, hurt 'em back. You get killed, walk it off.”_

If this isn’t life-and-death serious, I might have even laughed my butt off at that.

But we don’t get a break. The robots just keep coming.

_“What have you got, Stark?”_

_“Well, nothing great. Maybe a way to blow up the city. That'll keep it from impacting the surface if you guys can get clear.”_

_“I asked for a solution, not an escape plan.”_

The bossy asshat doing what he does best…

_“Impact radius is getting bigger every second. We're going to have to make a choice.”_

When what’s left of SHIELD shows up, I get a little pick-me-up. Bantering with Rhodey is always a fruitful exercise, too. At least now, we can get the people off this rock while I’m still trying to crunch numbers and gurd my loins, coming up with a plan.

Then it hits me like a knee to the groin (which hurts like a motherfucker, trust me…). A heat seal. So we congregate in the church to keep the bots from sending the city falling while FRIDAY, my new virtual assistant, helps me crunch the numbers.

Thor calls the bastard out, like we don’t need any more pressure to perform and everything…

 _“This is the best I can do. This is exactly what I wanted. All of you against all of me. How can you possibly hope to stop me?”_ This bot’s so cocky, I’m tempted to put him in his place with some braggadocio and my own brand of cocky and then I remember who made him. Right. Shutting up now.

Nope, can’t shut up. Points for trying though. _“Well, like the old man said… Together.”_

Cap turns to look at me with a small smirk despite the fight taking its toll. This is bad. All these small glances, little gestures…damn warning signs. Nothing has changed, I tell myself. So what if Steve Rogers might be, possibly, potentially my soulmate?! Didn’t I swear an oath to live my life alone? Because it’s uncomplicated that way?

Keep to the program, Stark. You’d be better off. He’d be better off, too.

-0-0-0-

_“I will miss you, Tony.”_

I want to ask him to repeat it, in case I’d heard him wrong the first time. I can swear he just said he’ll miss me… But I might just be imagining it. Wait— _what?_ —why would I be imagining Cap telling me he’ll miss me?

What?

_“Yeah? Well, it's time for me to tap out. Maybe I should take a page out of Barton's book and build Pepper a farm. Hope nobody blows it up.”_

_“The simple life.”_

_“You'll get there one day.”_

_“I don't know. Family, stability—the guy who wanted all that went in the ice 75 years ago. I think someone else came out.”_

This might be the single, most personal thing I’ve ever talked about with the Captain. I must say, it’s nice. It’s like we’re just a couple of normal guys, talking about normal things. Only we’re not.

I’m tempted to ask him about his Destiny Marks. I must have a death wish of some sort, but I restrain myself. There’s no use picking at that issue. Now or ever.

 _“You all right?”_ I should definitely ask myself the same question.

_“I’m home.”_

As I climb into my car, it’s then that I realize that I _am_ going to miss him, too.

-0-0-0-

It’s tough to go back to an empty tower. I like to convey the image of being bad-ass and an eccentric recluse, but really—when you’ve gotten used to a living space bustling with people, it’s quite an adjustment to have to contend with grave-like silences in the common areas.

And no one to bring me greasy burgers and coffee every morning.

I know, I know. This is bad! Two weeks in and I’m starting to miss him. Like… _really_ miss him. That I can’t get any substantial work done because I expect him to respectfully request FRIDAY for entrance into the workshop, or I smile to myself and think that I can’t wait to tell Cap about my reverse engineering something that’ll completely blow his mind only to realize that, save for my bots, I’m alone. I’m actually cranky because he’s not around!

This is really, _really_ bad.

When my phone rings one Tuesday morning, I don’t rush to answer it because I’m cranky again and I’m thinking that it’s probably just some scientist from SI R&D consulting me about something blowing up in their faces.

_“Hey Tony…”_

I can’t help the tingle of excitement running down my spine at the familiar cadence to that voice. It brings an impromptu grin to my face. But I shake it off, horrified that the Captain might sense the elation through the phone line.

I ask him how he is, how the Avengers facility is doing, how the new members are holding up. I try to phrase the questions as nonchalantly as possible, but I can hear myself speaking too fast and Bruce once said that’s the indication that I am either excited or stressed.

Jeez, I hope Rogers thinks I’m just stressed. The alternative is harder to explain. To him and to myself.

 _“Well, someone’s excited to hear about Avengers news.”_ Great…

_“I’m just looking for my next project. I’ve practically upgraded everything there is to upgrade in this entire stinking building.”_

_“You need to eat and sleep, too, you know.”_

I don’t know why that friendly reminder is making the roots of my hair tingle. He cares, sure. But I shouldn’t think that he _cares_ cares. I’m not supposed to care… Why do I care that he cares anyway?!

_“Do you want to get doughnuts?”_

What? _“What?”_

_“It’s just… I’ll be in the city tomorrow. I’m thinking we should get doughnuts—if you’re not too busy, of course. And catch up.”_

I smirk in spite of myself. I’m going to hell.

_“Sure.”_

-0-0-0-

What did I say before about the universe again? Oh yeah… Just when you think things are falling into place, the universe finds a way to screw you over. Or something. What is it with the universe that it just loves, _loves_ to screw me over? I know I’m fuckable despite my being on the wrong side of 40 and everything, but really… There must be someone out there who’d appreciate this more than me. Can’t get a break in this darn life!

After the bad affair in Sokovia with Ultron, I decide to pour my efforts into politics and philanthropy because I suddenly have all this free time in my hands and I really hate to go home to an empty tower.

Out of those efforts, The Accords is born. It’s just that I happen to agree with the bureaucratic brass pushing for it—we, people with extraordinary abilities, need to be put in check. Maybe it’s the guilt talking or the self-hate, but irrespective of my impetus, I really think that the time is ripe to be subject to oversight and be held accountable for the things we do.

Don’t get me wrong. I know that our intentions are good and pure: we want to save innocents. And we do save them. To a certain extent we are successful in that endeavor. But there’s a reason we have organized governments and police forces—it’s primarily their job to see to the welfare of their constituents. Saving is not a task we were given from these governments; saving is a task we have set for ourselves.

I took it upon myself to save the innocents I’ve put in harm’s way. No one told me to do it, I just did. And sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes we are even the catalyst for the self-same catastrophe we try to abate (read, Wakanda and Sokovia).

For every hundred we fail to save, we do succeed in saving tens of thousands. But tell that to the families of those one hundred, and I doubt you’ll keep seeing yourself as God’s gift to humankind. Sometimes, you’ll just start seeing yourself as a menace. A menace that needs to be contained. Bruce and I have talked about this countless times before. If he was here, he’d probably tell me I’m doing the right thing.

Steve— _Cap_ —doesn’t think so. Surprise, surprise…

_“I’m sorry, Tony. If I see a situation pointing south, I can’t ignore it. Sometimes I wish I could. I know we’re not perfect, but the safest hands are still our own.”_

Not from where I’m standing, they’re not.

I ignore the gnawing pain in the pit of my stomach. There’s nothing new about being at variance with Captain America. We butt heads _all the time_. Except when we don’t. Except when we would sit quietly in the workshop, enjoying each other’s wordless company. Except when we would get doughnuts whenever he was in the city. Except when we would look at each other—he, with sincerity and optimism and I, with dry wit and concealed disdain for the world at large.

I want to ask him if his position has nothing at all to do with his best buddy, James Barnes aka The Winter Soldier, erstwhile cryo-frozen, brainwashed, HYDRA bad-ass assassin, who, under The Accords is now being hunted as an international fugitive. But I stop myself. Why would I want to know? So what if it does? What’s the use? It’s not like we’re friends like he and Barnes are friends…

I should get it through my thick skull that Cap and I are just _teammates_. _Were_ just teammates.

And the fact that I have his name on my arm and mine on his have nothing to do with anything.

He becomes a fugitive, casting his lot in with Barnes, shortly after, and there is truly a parting of the ways as I continue towards the other direction, advocating The Accords. I have heavy hitters joining me in my team, too—Vision, T’Challa aka Black Panther (who also happens to be royalty—the King of Wakanda), Rhodey and, surprisingly, Romanoff. But I have my reservations about her. I know she’s torn because she’s also quite close to the Captain, but at the same time, she sees the logic in The Accords.

When Rhodey is badly injured in one of our little tussles with Cap’s faction, it dawns on me that this could only end in one of two ways: we turn or we get taken out. In the midst of it all, I begin to question who the real enemy is. Is it Cap and his anti-Accords faction or someone else—someone who will be better served by the discord among The Avengers? But I shake myself out of that train of thought. Regardless of that, I have to be steadfast in this advocacy.

I’m done putting other people in harm’s way because of my inability to accept my limitations.

_“Sorry, Tony. You know I wouldn't do this if I had any other choice. But he's my friend.”_

I’m so done with all my illusions of friendship with these people. Pepper, Happy and Rhodey are my only friends. The real enemy is whoever the fuck it was who dared to harm Rhodey. And I know. I saw with my own eyes that it was one of Cap’s. So if it’s a war he wants, I’ll give him war.

_“So was I.”_

Maybe those Destiny Marks really mean that we inevitably kill each other after all.

-0-0-0-

I almost miss it. Despite the vast intelligence and sheer genius at my disposal, I almost miss it until it’s nearly too late.

Steve is not the enemy. None in his anti-Accords faction are. HYDRA is. Fucking HYDRA that just doesn’t know when to fucking quit. And they have their scopes, snipers and assassins eyeing the Captain. They must have already had it with Steve thwarting them at every turn and his vocal dislike of the oversight brought by The Accords is the last straw.

I’m the one who decides to call for a temporary truce on the matter of the mandate of The Accords and scheduled a meeting with the Captain to discuss things with him, to put an end to this ‘war’ being waged over The Accords, including the possibility of proposing an amendment to the official document to give The Avengers and other well-meaning superpowered individuals some leeway and discretion to respond to incidents even without the long-winded protocol from top government brass. Barnes accompanies him to the meeting on my guarantee that neither of them will be arrested.

Natasha calls during a break in the meeting and warns about possible plots on Steve’s life that she had gotten wind of from her more shady contacts. HYDRA is at work again, and they aren’t going to stop until they succeed this time.

I don’t know if it’s some misstep on their part or paranoia about Natasha’s warning, but I notice them—these HYDRA crazies, crawling all over the steps of the justice building where the meeting had just been concluded.

When I notice a submachine gun being pulled out of a supposedly unobtrusive ice cream cart, everything seems to crawl to half-speed. I can’t really say what came over me, but without any shred of hesitation or reservations, I step in front of the Captain as bullets from multiple directions start to rain upon us.

I’m wearing a bulletproof vest, but it’s not made for such high caliber ammunition, and I feel metal penetrate through it and tear through my skin. And my nose fills with the smell of copper, smoke and sun-drenched concrete as I fall.

_“Tony! No… No, no, no… Tony…”_

Through my closed eyelids, the brightness of the sun dims—maybe it’s the people closing ranks around us through the gunfire or maybe it’s me as I lose what grasp I still have of consciousness.

 _“I was…wrong about you.”_ I murmur to Steve. I can’t breathe as my throat floods with blood and fluids from my ruptured stomach. I try to not think about it. Everyone dies. Everyone. But not everyone gets to have their death mean something.

Steve cradles my head on his leg, his blue eyes shining. Through my waning consciousness I see that he’s hit, too. In the shoulder. I know I don’t have enough time, and I gotta say something else. I turn to Barnes, who’s crouching beside Steve. His face is set with mild worry, which I know is not for me but for his friend.

 _“The whole world…was wrong about you.”_ I make eye contact with Barnes so he would know that I mean to tell it to him. And this is the closest thing that Tony Stark will ever come to making an apology to these two people who deserve it so very much.

I feel cold. So very cold that I can’t feel my limbs. It’s like I’m looking at myself from far away, like this deteriorating body doesn’t belong to me anymore. I try to smile through the mouthful of crimson blood pouring down the side of my face. I should have known that it’s going to be a messy death for me.

_“What have you done, Tony? Why?”_

I can’t see his face anymore, not through the haze of death. I can barely hear him above the ruckus of stampeding people, screaming sirens and slamming car doors.

Why did I do it? Because Steve has always been a better man than me. Maybe I’ve always known that if this war were to go down to the wire and it was going to be a choice between him and me, I would always pick him. _Always_.

Because he has always been the better man, and I was only better than me because of him. When I fight by his side.

Without my meaning to, I had fallen in love with the asshole. Completely contrary to what I once said I wouldn’t do. Contrary to what I have always believed in. And it’s only now that I realize it as I lie there, convulsing in my death throes. If I’m not dying, I might have stood up and guffawed my fucking ass off.

With my shaking right hand, I touch my left arm, right in the crook of the joint, where I know Steve’s name is, and smile with all the sadness, regret and pain I have that Steve will never, ever know now, and close my eyes with finality.

_“This is my destiny.”_

-0-0-0-

I don’t expect to wake up. Or maybe I expect to wake up in Valhalla, Heaven, Elysium or wherever it is we, men of science with such astounding contributions to human civilization, consider as the Most Happening Place in the Afterlife. Wearing a magic wifebeater or something that will make me look like my ideal self. I am not going to say no to rubbing elbows with Leonardo da Vinci in that place of afterlife either. Oh yeah… I would love to be welcomed by da Vinci along with a veritable parade of tall blondes. Yeah…

Somehow, I never pictured Elysium to have such tacky white walls, an overstuffed couch, generic window blinds, a mounted two-year-old flatscreen TV and an IV pole. And lo and behold, at the other end of that IV line is my slightly distended arm. I don’t see why I need an IV drip in the afterlife.

Unless… this is—hell, of some sort.

Or I’m not as dead as I thought I was.

I quickly close my eyes when I hear the door handle jiggle. I hear the creak as the door opens, but I keep my eyes closed, partly afraid of what I would see, partly in denial that after all that drama, I manage to evade death by the skin of my teeth to my utmost surprise.

I feel the newcomer take the seat by the right side of my bed. A warm hand that’s distinctly male, judging by the size and the roughness of it, first touches me on my IV-swollen arm, then on my hair, the side of my face and rests for a moment on my shoulder. It’s nice. It’s as if he wants some kind of assurance that I’m still alive or something. I want to take a peek if it’s Bruce—if maybe Brucie-bear has returned from his self-imposed isolation upon hearing that I had ‘died’, but I keep my eyes closed and my breaths even, imitating that of sleep.  

_“When are you waking up, Tony? You’re missing out on some world-class coffee right here.”_

I fight the urge to quiver in shock because I would know that voice anywhere. It’s the last voice I heard when I was dying. It’s Steve. But what is he doing here? Isn’t he supposed to be standing vigil by Barnes’ psych-ward sick bed or something?

_“Actually, you’re not missing out on anything because the coffee here is horrible. You will have a field day insulting it.”_

He chuckles, but even my almost dead self can detect a hint of sadness and desperation in his tone. I fight the building twitch in the corners of my mouth because I’m an asshole who wants to hear more.

_“Please wake up, Tony. We’re all waiting for you to wake up. I made a promise when they brought you in that I’m not leaving your side until you wake up, and I’m keeping that promise. I’m not going anywhere. Please…please wake up, Tony.”_

I’m in a quandary here. I want to open my eyes so badly to see the relief in Steve’s eyes and smile, but at the same time, I want to keep pretending to be unconscious to prolong this… whatever this is.

Without opening my eyes, I feel Steve place something on the nearby bedside table. Must be the cup of horrid coffee he just told me about. Before I can reconsider taking a peep at Steve’s back or profile, he is touching me again. On my right arm. Not where the IV drip ends but on the crook behind my elbow. Where his name is written. He touches it so gently, tracing the skin there. And I realize something.

He knows.

He must have seen it. The name— _his_ name on my arm. On _both_ of my arms.

I want to sit up and smack the side of my head in consternation. This is all my fault. Of course, it is. I had to touch my bloody arm before I ‘expired’, didn’t I? And it must have clued him in.

Dammit!

It may make me an ungrateful little wretch, but at this point, I’m actually sorry I survived the multiple gunshot wounds because what’s coming is going to be a bitch to explain. I mean, how do I explain to Steve that I have his name on both my arms, which would make him both my soulmate and slayer?

More importantly, how do I begin to tell him that I’m in love with him?

_“I’m so sorry, Tony… Please… Wake up.”_

Goosebumps erupt on my arm just as he takes his warm hand away. I can’t keep this up much longer. So I wheeze just slightly, cough and slowly open my eyes. The first thing I see as everything comes into focus is the sparkling blue eyes of Steve Rogers.

 _“Steve?”_ At least, I don’t have to fake the roughness of my voice. Man, how long was I out that I feel like something foul crawled into my mouth, partied too hard and died there?

The expression on Steve’s face is hard to read, like a mix of remorse, sadness, relief, happiness, exhaustion and anxiety. I barely register it because I suddenly find myself swathed in warm and burly super soldier.

_“Oh my God… Thank you… You’re awake. Oh my God. Please don’t ever do that again, Tony. Please promise me that you’ll never scare me like that ever again.”_

Whaaa—I was the one who nearly died and _I_ scared _him_?! Hmm, he smells nice… He smells uniquely Steve. Is that vanilla?

_“I died, didn’t I? Why am I alive? What happened? How long was I out?”_

Apparently, four questions is already a handful, so he postpones having to answer it because he says that a lot of people will be wanting to hear that I’ve woken up. And the answers can wait for when all of the people who are worried sick about me are already in attendance.

Soon enough, we are joined by Pepper, Rhodey, Happy, Nat, Clint, Vision, Wanda, Sam, and even Thor and, to my utmost delight—Brucie-bear (back from his self-exile). There’s also the new Avengers, Scott Lang aka Ant-Man, and my prodigy from the days of my little war with Cap, Peter Parker aka Spider-Man. They are all, surprisingly, quite glad to see me.

I turn to Steve again. _“Shouldn’t you be with Barnes—aren’t you, like joined at the hip by now? Or has he run away again?”_

My voice is still disturbingly garbled, like I’ve been masticating and swallowing gravel.

 _“He’s on a mission. He’s sort of taken the mantle of Captain America.”_ Steve’s abashed by that.

I’m more gobsmacked than anything else— _what_?! When did that happen?!

_“A couple of months now, actually.”_

I reiterate my earlier questions. They’re kind enough to answer, so by way of a rundown—one and two: yes, I did die. I flat-lined for seven and a half minutes. Which should have made it impossible for me to be brought back, but they made use of the same substance that enabled Fury to bring Coulson back, and that whatever it is—I’m probably better off not knowing. For my part, I don’t press the details. Chances are, I’m part Asgardian now or something to that effect.

Three and four: I was barely dead when the ambulance bearing Coulson, Fury, Pepper and Hill arrived at the scene to administer the mystery substance. It was the subsequent recovery that was a bitch. Eight months— _eight_. And some odd weeks and days. But I am told that I was put under an induced coma for six months and was unconscious for another two months and then some. Because my body took a beating. For which HYDRA had paid and dearly. The Avengers had lived up to their name, hunting down every member of HYDRA they could find. They’re not even sure now if some pockets of that wacko organization have survived. It had been reminiscent of the witch-hunts of old.

I’m so proud of my babies! Avenging me and everything… I preen inwardly.

Oh and yeah—Barnes is the new Captain America.

When I direct my question to Steve as to why it was decided that way, his answer is both simple but cryptic. Not to mention, loaded with meaning that I’m not sure if I’m the only one who doesn’t quite get it.

_“I made a promise.”_

Huh?

-0-0-0-

It’s easy to fall back into some kind of routine. I’m told that I need to stay in the med-floor of the Avengers Tower for a couple more weeks for some assessments, and I take it like a champ. Which naturally means that I throw the mother of all bitch-fits. Is it not enough that I was comatose or unconscious for eight fucking months, do I have to prolong the torture by staying cooped up in this tacky hospital room for another couple of weeks?!

After a lot of haranguing and pleading and bargaining, I end up getting Wi-Fi and a fast-speed StarkTab at least. I’ve been _dead_ for fuck’s sake, I need to see if my brain cells are still up to speed.

And Steve just…hangs around in my hospital room like he used to do in the workshop. He enters in the morning with my tray of medicines for the day, sits on the couch, draws (different angles of my IV pole, for all I know), makes sure that I drink the medicines as the day matures, and leaves just before lunch to vanish to parts unknown. And the cycle is repeated the next day. And the next. And the next…

Sometimes, we talk but mostly he just keeps me silent company. I must confess that I like staring at him from out of the corner of my eye. A large part of me is thankful that the matter of my Destiny Marks has not come up yet. If it’s up to me, Steve’ll have his mind conveniently wiped of any recollection of it as soon as I get cleared of the med-floor.

It’s not like I’m expecting any sort of demonstrations of returned affection from Steve. Because I’m not. It’s not easy for me to transition from finding the guy irritating to being friends with him and then to waging a war with him and then to realizing that I’m in love with him. So having to do away with any kind of conversation verging on discussing any of those topics is perfectly fine by me. But sometimes, I do feel like there’s an elephant in the room that we’re just pretending we both can’t see. Sometimes, I catch him staring at me so intently like he wants to ask me something or tell me something, but when I look at him directly he scrambles back to what he’s supposedly doing and he won’t look at me again for the rest of the day—not even when he’s saying goodbye before he leaves.

I’m perfectly fine with not talking to him about things we should really be talking about, but there are instances when I just want the surreptitious staring to stop.

_“Is there something you want to tell me, Cap?”_

_“Huh—what?”_

I tell him that I can see him staring from out of the corner of my eye, so if there’s something he wants to tell me, he should get it off his chest.

_“Why did you do it?”_

_“Do what?”_

_“You know perfectly well what.”_

Why did I take those bullets for him? Of course. For eight months that I was unconscious, that must have been eating him inside. We were at war—we were at odds with each other because of his stubbornness, but then I stepped in front of him and shielded him from the volley of gunfire. I had died for him, and now he wants to know why.

_“I told you why.”_

_“Yeah. It was your_ destiny. _”_

_“It was.”_

_“I don’t understand, Tony.”_

_“How long are we going to keep pretending that you don’t know about these?”_ I gingerly place the StarkTab on my lap and gestured towards the crook of my arm where one of my Destiny Marks is—where _his_ name is.

He falls silent. Furrowing his brows, he seems to consider what to say next.

 _“Oh I know about your names—_ name _…_ ” Steve swallows and fidgets, obviously uncomfortable. _“Just so you know, most people would want to avoid tempting fate. They are not brash enough or—or so dismissive of their own life and safety… But not you.”_

_“I’m not like most people. You should know that by now.”_

_“Why did you still do it, knowing what you know? That I—“_ I wait for him to finish. But he doesn’t. Maybe he can’t bear to say it… I mean, if he can’t even handle _saying_ it, why are we even talking about this, in the first place?!

 _“Maybe, it’s difficult to understand…for you or for anyone. You might not even have these or maybe you do but not like mine. I don’t think anyone has marks like mine because mine’s all screwed up. But it_ doesn’t matter _. I did what I did because I_ chose _to. Sure I have a destiny. But I have to believe that my volition is bigger and stronger than my destiny.”_

Steve places his stuff on the couch beside him, stands up and sits on the side of my bed with a resolute (or resigned?) exhale through his nose. He starts painstakingly folding the sleeves to his sweater.

_“You’d be surprised at how much I understand more than most, Tony.”_

I already know that my name is written on his right arm. I want to tell him that I know, but that it was unintended and completely accidental on my part. Oh, and there it is: _Tony_. Written clear as day on the crook of his right arm.

But I freeze, shocked to utter silence, when I see the name written on his _left_ arm:

 _Tony_.

-0-0-0-

Quite conveniently, Steve vanishes after that. He stops coming to my hospital room to sit with me and watch me tinker with my tablet and dry-swallow my meds. He doesn’t come when I get discharged from the med-floor and move back in to my penthouse room in the Tower. He stops coming to the workshop to sit on the floor and draw electrical cables. Not even after I buy a new couch—in case he’d gotten fed up with kipping on the cold, unforgivable floor.

I want to ask the others what had happened to Steve, but I hesitate. I don’t want to seem like I care too much. Or appear to miss him and yearn for his company. But inwardly, I do. I miss him and yearn for the company I had already gotten quite used to.

I wonder why he had chosen now to disappear—after he’d religiously sat by my sick bed for eight months while I was unconscious, continued to sit by my bed to mother me while I recovered, and shown me that we were two-of-a-kind. He has my name on both his arms the same way that I have his.

Shit! It still blows my mind, thinking about it now. But what does it _mean_? If we’re destined to be with each other but be the cause of each other’s demise, are we being punished for something? Does that mean we cannot be together because one quarrel or misunderstanding and we’re probably going to gun each other down? Or we can, but it comes with a ‘love each other at your own risk’ type of caveat?

I don’t know why I’m even thinking this way—I don’t even know if Steve feels about me like I feel about him. But judging by the fact that he’s disappeared from my life, it’s like 98-2 he doesn’t feel the same way and doesn’t want anything to do with me. So, I immerse myself in work I had missed out on while I was nearly dead and recovering in the med-floor.

It’s never boring anyway. Bruce has moved back in, and someone else from the team is usually around to check up on me. I guess nearly dying has its perks; my small circle of trust has considerably expanded. I’m already ‘retired’ from the Avenging business, for all intents and purposes, but they still look in on me sometimes to ask for ammunition upgrades or engineering designs but oftentimes just to chat and ask about my latest projects. Instead of being irritated by it, I find it endearing now. Maybe this is another offshoot to nearly dying.

There are late nights, though, when I’m feeling weak in willpower that I nearly ask FRIDAY to use the satellites to locate Steve, just so I can see that he’s safe. But terminate the command halfway to locating him. What good will it do? That’s just masochism, and Tony Stark is a lot of things, but a masochistic idiot is not one of them.

Sometimes, to keep my mind occupied away from thoughts of Steve, I sneak out of the Tower and take a walk around Central Park. I guess when you’ve come so close to losing everything, it’s when you start to notice the little things that you once took for granted. No one will ever guess what I like hanging out in Central Park for—even I’m surprised when I realize what it is:

I find myself enjoying looking at the families and the life partners who walk around hand-in-hand, park themselves on the benches—talk or laugh over caramel apples or ice cream cones or corndogs, share an outdoor table in the park restaurants to catch up after a long day’s or week’s work. They look so simple and uncomplicated. And inwardly, I am so envious. Because it’s something I will never have.

I reassess an old oath I made to myself: that I will spend my life alone—to do away with complications, struggles and pain. I made that promise to myself before I met Steve, but meeting Steve hasn’t really changed anything, has it? If anything, my life’s gotten like a thousand times more complicated since I met him. God, if only I can unlove him like you can unfollow people in Twitter or unfriend in Facebook…

But I can’t. Once those floodgates are open, there’s no going back. Maybe if I hadn’t died, that realization would’ve been conveniently left in the very recesses of my consciousness. But—again—nearly dying does something to people. It sure did something to me…

So what do I do now? I’m in love with Steve, but he doesn’t feel the same way. I can’t unlove him because, against my best intentions, I don’t think I—or anyone, for that matter—am engineered that way. But I also can’t continue to feel the way that I do, otherwise, there’s always going to be this emptiness, this—this envy and this regret that I didn’t die when I should have. And that’s just offensively ungrateful…

Maybe, in time, I will stop feeling this way. Learn to live with the pain of a life destined for misery.

Maybe down the road, I can learn to live with what is and what could never be.

-0-0-0-

_“Hello Tony.”_

I don’t think there’s anything on God’s green earth that could’ve prepared me for seeing Steve again. After _ten_ months of no news, no phone calls, no nothing, seeing him is like being walloped by a big block of ice to the face. It’s not like he has any obligations to stay in touch, though, so I swallow any snide and sarcastic remarks or accusations. With immense difficulty.

_“Cap.”_

Curt greeting. Nothing of the choking pain I’ve been learning to live with for almost a year now. Good. He doesn’t have to know how my emotions are throwing me for a loop now. Come on! I’m supposed to have a handle on my emotions, like, ten billion years ago—and now Cap is stripping me bare here with a look and two words?! Get it fucking together, Stark!

The gang’s all back together: Thor, even his brother Loki (whom Barton is currently trying to murder with invisible eye lasers or something), Cap, Barnes. And some new friends that Bruce explains he’s met in his travels: Star-Prince or something, Gamora, a tree with a vocabulary of five words, a furry critter and a pale Hulk. T’Challa and Stephen Strange are also there, so I stand with them—primarily because they are the ones standing farthest away from Steve and Barnes.

So there’s a new threat to the Earth by the name of Thanos and his extraterrestrial army (why does it always have to be fucking aliens?!). He is in possession of a weapon called the Infinity Gauntlet and it lacks one more gem—the one embedded in Vision’s head, hence his vendetta against Earth. Plus, you know, what’s another planet to add to one’s landholdings? Yeah. He’s on his way, and The Avengers must stand with The Guardians of the Galaxy and all the other Enhanced that we can encourage to join our cause to defend the Earth.

After the impromptu meeting, I quickly slip away to return to the workshop and science. Maybe there’s something that I can come up with to slow Thanos and his forces down as they make a beeline for Earth…

But Steve accosts me in the entrance to my workshop. Asshat must have taken the stairwell—drat!

_“It’s good to see you again, Tony.”_

I can’t really say the same—I can’t really say _anything_ because I’m afraid my voice will break. I just clench my jaw and blink.

Silence. Oh my God—Steve, if there’s nothing you want to tell me, then why don’t you just step aside and let me be?! I want so badly— _so badly_ —to tell him that, but there’s nothing. I just stand there and stare blankly at him. He hasn’t changed much. His hair is a bit longer than the last time I’d seen him. But he’s got more color, too—more tanned, like he’d spent a couple of months on the beach. It suits him. I’m glad that the past ten months treated him well.

_“You got tan. It suits you.”_

I thank the science god that my voice remained even as I said it. But since I don’t know how long I can keep up this farce of being unaffected, I need to make a quick escape.

_“I—uh—I gotta go do something. I’ll—um—see you around…if you’re staying, that is.”_

Oh _God_ —you just had to add those last five words, don’t you, Stark?! Stupid fucking genius asshole!

I gesture awkwardly that I have to skedaddle and scamper off like death itself is after me. But not before I catch the expression on Steve’s face in the wake of my escape. What was that? Did he actually look sad and hurt? Or did I just imagine the whole thing because I’m trying to ascribe something into something that ain’t that—at all?!

I seek refuge in the workshop and actually stay there for the next 72 hours in heavy denial. A part of me hopes that Steve’s already gone by the time I rejoin society, but a part of me’s afraid that he’s still somewhere out there, waiting in the unavoidable areas and looking like a kicked puppy. I can’t deal with this now: another potential requiem in the wings and the one that got away circling my orbit after ten fucking months of me trying—and largely, failing—to forget what I feel about him.

Too complicated.

Bruce gets wind of it (Bruce is _always_ the one who gets wind of it—sometimes I think he knows me too fucking well), and catches me off guard in the workshop, by visiting unannounced in the guise of asking me about any Thanos-related science efforts, but what he really wants is too squeeze me for details like a fucking blueberry.

I tell him to kindly fuck off, but he doesn’t get affected by shit like that from me anymore (I knew I should’ve thrown him out on the streets when I had a chance…)! And before I know it—before I can put a muzzle on me—I’m ranting to him. I’m ranting to Bruce about Steve! What the crud?!

_“When are you two going to get your heads out of your asses?”_

OK—that hurts!

_“Tony, why do you think members of the team kept looking in on you after you got discharged from the med-floor and Steve had gone?”_

Because they’re my friends?

_“Well—yes, we are. But we didn’t have to motherhen you. And yet at least one of us was always around to keep you company. What do you think was the reason for that?”_

I don’t know, Brucie-bear! I mean, here I am thinking you guys were always around because you liked keeping an eye on me but you’re saying that wasn’t reason enough.

_“We made a promise to Steve to keep an eye on you. Keep you company while he was off soul-searching to try to find what he really wants to do with his life. He didn’t want to leave, but he didn’t want to endanger you by being around you all the time. He said something about soul marks or something like that…”_

Huh.

_“Get your butt out of this workshop and find him, Tony. He’s never really forgiven himself for getting you shot and nearly killed. We’re facing another potential world-ending crisis here and the team needs the two of you in top form if we’re ever going to stand a chance against Thanos.”_

I reluctantly follow Bruce out of the workshop. He gets off on the floor of his lab while I continue on up to the penthouse for a change of clothes.

I’m so immersed in my thoughts that I almost miss the new decorations adorning the penthouse. I freeze in my tracks and look around. There’s clotheslines hanging all around the penthouse—a literal web of them, but instead of pieces of clothing, hanging from the lines are papers, hundreds of them, in a tight side by side arrangement—so dense the papers nearly block out the light from the ceiling-to-floor glass windows.

I gingerly walk to the closest line to study the papers only to discover that they are drawings—the whole lot of them. Hundreds and hundreds of drawings.

Of me.

There’s some of me hunched over a machine; there’s several of me looking up at holo-screens, of me petting my bots, of me eating burgers, of me just sitting on a wheeled stool looking all pensive, of me drinking coffee from a tumbler, of me with my neck arched back in unrestrained laughter, of me. Me. Me. More me…

_“I guess it’s too much to ask that you would miss me just as much as I have missed you.”_

I turn on the balls of my feet towards where the voice pipes up, and find Steve standing there, with his hands shoved deep in the front pockets of his jeans. He looks both shy and sad. Apologetic and guilty.

_“If you hadn’t left, you wouldn’t have had to miss me.”_

_“I thought if I left, I could protect you. If you’re meant to die by my hands or because of me, then no harm could ever really come to you without me around, even if you do like putting your life at risk. I thought, too, that if something does happen to you—again… because of me, then I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.”_

I feel a painful churning in the pit of my stomach and a prickling behind my eyeballs.

_“Why?”_

Steve looks at me quizzically, unsure of what I’m asking.

_“Why would you want to protect me that much? I’ve been risking my life long before I met you, and I’ll be risking my life long after. Why would you think leaving me alone is going to protect me? What’s keeping me alive mean to you?”_

Steve looks at his feet so intently. I doubt he’s going to answer.

 _“You still don’t know? You’re standing in a room full of my drawings of you. And you still don’t know?”_ Steve jokes with a sad smile. _“I want you safe, Tony. And I want you safe because I’m in love with you._

_“And I don’t think I can handle it if something bad happens to you because of me.”_

Oh…we’re so fucked.

 _“That’s bullshit. You’ve always known that the name on your arms pertains to me and yet you befriended me, you pushed and prodded until I let you in, until I came to value you as a friend…as_ more _than a friend. And all the while I could’ve harmed you and killed you, too. I waged a fucking_ war _against you, but_ no _—it should be you who’s the bigger man to make the sacrifice plays, right? It should be_ you _leaving_ me _to keep me safe and not the other way around—“_

 _“—what do you mean I’m more than a friend to you?”_ Steve suddenly perks up realizing my slip of the tongue.

_“—and out of all my long-winded diatribe, that’s all you got?! Are you seriously—“_

I don’t finish my statement because Steve, with his long strides, stands in front of me, seizes my face in his hands and silences me with a deep kiss. One I’m completely unprepared for so all I had the presence of mind to do is close my eyes and savor the moment.

How many times did I imagine this moment for ten long months, I’ve lost count. How many times did I dream of this in all possible scenarios, variations, permutations and combinations, the greatest mathematicians would fucking weep.

I let my walls fall and the ice in my heart melt. Oh God…This is so worth the wait.

For once, in a long time, in all my life lived as a pessimist to this Destiny Marks business, I finally believe that there is someone for us—meant for us, who will complete us. Set our hearts on fire and our souls ablaze.

I’ve found him, and he’s real.

-0-0-0-

It’s a Thursday when it dawns on us that we’re on a losing battle against the aliens.

So much carnage. Fires and explosions everywhere. And death. The alien forces are so strong; we’re overwhelmed, we are running out of ammo and answers. But not hope. They’ll have to wipe us all out before they can say they’ve won. We refuse to give in without a last stand.

This is where we will make a last stand. On the shores of the Long Island Sound. We form a line on the beach, side by side, looking out towards the sea where an alien ship is coming, heralded by hundreds if not _thousands_ of drones. We agreed to keep the line and buy Thor and Quill some time to make something happen. It may be too late for us, but let it not be too late for the rest of the world we swore to protect.

To my left stands Rhodey and to my right, Steve. Barnes is on Steve’s other side. We’re all grim-faced, accepting of our fates. Accepting, but hardly unafraid.

No matter how many times I’ve brashly put my life in danger, it doesn’t get any easier—the acceptance that this is where it ends. I find it a tad more difficult to accept this time around because of the man on my right. I would’ve wanted more time, more days spent with him, more stolen kisses shared with him; I would’ve wanted to show him the world that kept on spinning while he slept for 70 years. But it’s not looking too good right now.

I can feel myself trembling underneath the suit. There’s something lodged in my throat, making it difficult to breathe. But not to tear up. The approaching darkness seems to melt in a mosaic of my unshed tears. Whether it’s from fear or melancholy, I don’t know anymore.

 _“Tony…. Tony! Look at me.”_ I turn towards Steve as he yanks the glove off his left hand with his teeth and offers the same hand to me. I retract my gauntlet from my own fingers and entwine my hand with his.

 _“I’m afraid, too. But I can handle the fear if I have you beside me. Because I'm not half as good at anything as I am when I'm doing it next to you. And that's the truth.”_ Steve tells me, his blue eyes shining with pooling tears. _“If this is the last time I will ever have to say this, then I wanna make it count: I love you, Tony Stark.”_

I bring the back of his hand to my lips and kiss it, choking back my own tears. Life’s so fucking unfair! That I should find him only to lose him. _“And_ I _love_ you _, Steve Rogers.”_

And it finally occurs to me: the meaning of our marks. (Why do these epiphanies always come to me when I’m this close to kicking it? What—like it’s added insult to injury that this is what your marks mean, but time has run out on you to bask on that realization because you’re going to die in the next ten minutes…) Steve and I are the perfect iteration of the Destiny Marks because is this not what love and loving someone really means? Our beloved is both our completion and our ruin. Our purpose and our peril.

If I leave here and lock myself up in a bunker, I’d probably live. But then, what would I be living for? If choosing to be with Steve, fighting side by side with him, means I will die, then so be it. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for Steve. I would die for him. I _have_ died for him. And I’d do it again. Again and again, if I have to.

And that’s love. That’s how much I love him.

If all that we have left is the next seven minutes, or seven hours, or seven days, seven years or seventy, I carry with me no regrets that fate sent him my way. Only immense gratitude that through time, several wars, our own bullheadedness, near death experiences, and everything else in between, we have found each other.

Because he’s both my demise and my destiny. My wings and my gravity.

_“Thank you for coming into my life.”_

I squeeze his hand, snug within my own. There’s nowhere I’m meant to be but here.

Beside him.

 

**-0-FIN-0-**


End file.
